“If they keep this up, liberals and conservatives may start talking for real, and maybe even fix a thing or two.“. Well said Matt. I’m of a conservative bent; and I love reading what you have to say. I know we would absolutely not agree on a lot of things, particularly when it comes to specific policies; however, we do have common cause on this recent journalistic absurdity! We SHOULD talk and maybe fix a thing or two 🙂
What a thought provoking, brilliant framing of our current horrendous clusterfuck. I love supporting you here on Substack, but it sure seems like this would do a lot of public good if it were more widely disseminated.
A major point of agreement between honest liberals and conservatives who converge here can be the Chinese Communist Party. Aren't these things we can agree on?
Their civil liberties record is horrendous. They use slave labor, which is not only monstrous by itself, but makes them an unfair and unfit trading partner. (They will never allow a monitoring process that will reliably expose when slave labor has been used.)
They are an aggressive rising power. They have bribed leaders in developing countries to take exploitative loans that will cripple their economies and fledgling social welfare systems. (They do not enforce anything equivalent to our Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.)
They harvest organs from political prisoners. They have subjugated the people of Tibet, Xinjiang (Uighurs), and now Hong Kong. They certainly cancelled domestic flights from Wuhan after they learned of the virus outbreak, while allowing international flights to proceed. We may learn that they concealed the origins of the outbreak.
And they have helped skew and corrupt our political discourse. Why does Lebron James call out the police here, but stay silent about the camps for the Uighurs? Why hasn't Hollywood made a major film critical of China in almost 25 years (since Seven Years in Tibet in 1997)? They've certainly made plenty of films critical of America in that time. Why are the same American companies that may benefit from slave labor in China pouring money into BLM?
We should always expose and fight our domestic injustices. But has posturing on these become a cheap way to avoid accountability for participating in horrific humor rights abuses in another country?
I think a tough line on China (in trade, foreign policy, military alliances, and more) is a great dividing line in our politics. And it is not between left and right. It's between the bought and the rest of us.
Leftist media outlets have become so doctrinaire that they can no longer even understand how people who disagree on some issues but agree on others can have a conversation.
It all started because the DNC was incapable of admitting that they blew the 2016 election, not because of Russia, not because of the Koch brothers, not because of Bernie but because of themselves. They still cannot admit it. That is what is called Trump Derangement Syndrome.
"They’re wrong on the ideology, but right about one thing: they’ve created a brand of imperious elite politics so revolting that it has the potential to unite even this Balkanized wreck of a country. If they keep this up, liberals and conservatives may start talking for real, and maybe even fix a thing or two."
Yes. And if this happens, you, Matt Taibbi, will be a significant part of the story. This site is ground zero.
This is some of your best writing, Matt. Your irony and jokes help the medicine go down...especially when discussing such dispiriting topics as ideological bullying and the widespread demise of free speech, debate, and objective journalism. For instance, this:
“ The American liberalism I knew growing up was inclusive, humble, and democratic. It valued the free exchange of ideas among other things because a central part of the liberal’s identity was skepticism and doubt, most of all about your own correctitude. Truth was not a fixed thing that someone owned, it was at best a fleeting consensus, and in our country everyone, down to the last kook, at least theoretically got a say. We celebrated the fact that in criminal courts, we literally voted to decide the truth of things.”
Those were the days, huh? On behalf of kooks everywhere, I hope we can pull it together and make your last paragraph come true.
Hey grifter Matt! Hope you're making good use of the $50 you swindled from me a few weeks ago for your annual subscription. Come another 11 months you'll be swindling another $50 from me if you keep up your good work . . . er, I mean the carnival act you write. You should be proud since nary a penny has been swindled from me by the NY Times, Washington Post, The Daily Beast or the Intercept.
Even though I do not share all of Matt's political views, I have been a fan for years, and I believe this may be the most important piece he has ever authored. How did we reach the point where "journalists" have decided they need not report any news that might reflect poorly on their political party? Hate Trump all you want, but does that mean you will simply allow failing policies by the next administration to continue without question?
As a border state resident, I awoke this morning, to news that a woman at the border being actively raped, was saved by US agents in a helicopter. With spotlights and a bullhorn, they were able to stop the attack midway. This was hours after a 5 year old boy was left all alone, screaming in the dark, in the desert, by smugglers and a day after drowning migrants were pulled from the Rio Grande by Texas troopers. It is snake season in Texas, few leave their dogs outside, alone this time of year, unless they know the area is clear, but as a nation we are OK with kindergarders traversing the wild solo, in the middle of the night?
The abuse of women and children is bad enough, but there has also been virtually no coverage of the potential for terrorists accessing the US, via the southern border. Biden may be convinced white supremacists are the nation's biggest threat, I am not so sure. A former neighbor in Northern California expressed relief at moving, with fire season starting two months early this year. Conditions are the worst on record. Has no one considered that it would be easy pickings for half dozen terrorists to slip across the border, wait until August and then with nothing more than matchbooks, watch large swaths of California glow, while people perish and the entire US economy is thrown for a loop?
There are a multitude of other topics the media has decided to ignore. Crime, inflation, the origins of Covid, housing prices, Hunter Biden, etc. etc. A former professor use to say the amendments were not numbered by accident. Freedom of speech and the press were first because a democracy cannot survive without a free press to keep those in power honest. He never contemplated what happens when the press is no longer honest.
..."they’ve created a brand of imperious elite politics so revolting that it has the potential to unite even this Balkanized wreck of a country. If they keep this up, liberals and conservatives may start talking for real, and maybe even fix a thing or two."
If you have read what is in the Hunter Biden laptop, it is terrifying. The so-called leader of the so-called free world ran for president because his senile brain is so besotted with his now elderly drug addict son, that when his meth mouth kid threw a tantrum about getting blamed by the family, daddy ran for president. Sonny boy wants to go back into the arms of the gangsters running Ukraine, take all the drugs he wants, and f*@k all the prostitutes they send him, and make porn videos of himself. This is all terrifying that the hand on the button in the white house is that deranged.
It also proves that Hunter Biden acted as exactly the nepotist hotline to the white house that some suspected. It brings into question WTAF was the reason for the USA overthrowing that friendly government.
This horseshit is how THIRD WORLD banana republics run. No exaggeration.
I voted for the Obams/Biden team, twice (2nd time with grave misgivings. But at this point I say the Obama administration is when the USA became a banana republic.
I'm a consultant to several liberal social services and arts organizations, many of which are now dedicating time and money to rooting out white supremacy within their midst. It's lunacy. It's Communists under the bed hysteria. Do these people really think that Nazis founded a food bank? I can't tell who's a True Believer and who's just going along to get along, but my guess is that the number of True Believers is distressingly high. Of course, in a few years, they'll forget they ever thought such nonsense.
The bottom line is Matt and Greenwald just have more brains and integrity than other media liberals, so they see the idiocy and hypocrisy of the reactionary group-think press and they can't help but call it out. Fortunately being ostracized by a bunch of middle-brow herd animals probably doesn't sting very much, especially when you don't need them..
“If they keep this up, liberals and conservatives may start talking for real, and maybe even fix a thing or two.“. Well said Matt. I’m of a conservative bent; and I love reading what you have to say. I know we would absolutely not agree on a lot of things, particularly when it comes to specific policies; however, we do have common cause on this recent journalistic absurdity! We SHOULD talk and maybe fix a thing or two 🙂
What a thought provoking, brilliant framing of our current horrendous clusterfuck. I love supporting you here on Substack, but it sure seems like this would do a lot of public good if it were more widely disseminated.
“Huffing horeshit into Headlines”.
So true, so perfectly stated. Sums up our mainstream media today.
A major point of agreement between honest liberals and conservatives who converge here can be the Chinese Communist Party. Aren't these things we can agree on?
Their civil liberties record is horrendous. They use slave labor, which is not only monstrous by itself, but makes them an unfair and unfit trading partner. (They will never allow a monitoring process that will reliably expose when slave labor has been used.)
They are an aggressive rising power. They have bribed leaders in developing countries to take exploitative loans that will cripple their economies and fledgling social welfare systems. (They do not enforce anything equivalent to our Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.)
They harvest organs from political prisoners. They have subjugated the people of Tibet, Xinjiang (Uighurs), and now Hong Kong. They certainly cancelled domestic flights from Wuhan after they learned of the virus outbreak, while allowing international flights to proceed. We may learn that they concealed the origins of the outbreak.
And they have helped skew and corrupt our political discourse. Why does Lebron James call out the police here, but stay silent about the camps for the Uighurs? Why hasn't Hollywood made a major film critical of China in almost 25 years (since Seven Years in Tibet in 1997)? They've certainly made plenty of films critical of America in that time. Why are the same American companies that may benefit from slave labor in China pouring money into BLM?
We should always expose and fight our domestic injustices. But has posturing on these become a cheap way to avoid accountability for participating in horrific humor rights abuses in another country?
I think a tough line on China (in trade, foreign policy, military alliances, and more) is a great dividing line in our politics. And it is not between left and right. It's between the bought and the rest of us.
Leftist media outlets have become so doctrinaire that they can no longer even understand how people who disagree on some issues but agree on others can have a conversation.
It all started because the DNC was incapable of admitting that they blew the 2016 election, not because of Russia, not because of the Koch brothers, not because of Bernie but because of themselves. They still cannot admit it. That is what is called Trump Derangement Syndrome.
"They’re wrong on the ideology, but right about one thing: they’ve created a brand of imperious elite politics so revolting that it has the potential to unite even this Balkanized wreck of a country. If they keep this up, liberals and conservatives may start talking for real, and maybe even fix a thing or two."
Yes. And if this happens, you, Matt Taibbi, will be a significant part of the story. This site is ground zero.
This is some of your best writing, Matt. Your irony and jokes help the medicine go down...especially when discussing such dispiriting topics as ideological bullying and the widespread demise of free speech, debate, and objective journalism. For instance, this:
“ The American liberalism I knew growing up was inclusive, humble, and democratic. It valued the free exchange of ideas among other things because a central part of the liberal’s identity was skepticism and doubt, most of all about your own correctitude. Truth was not a fixed thing that someone owned, it was at best a fleeting consensus, and in our country everyone, down to the last kook, at least theoretically got a say. We celebrated the fact that in criminal courts, we literally voted to decide the truth of things.”
Those were the days, huh? On behalf of kooks everywhere, I hope we can pull it together and make your last paragraph come true.
The question is how far left do you have to be to think Glenn Greenwald is right wing?
Hey grifter Matt! Hope you're making good use of the $50 you swindled from me a few weeks ago for your annual subscription. Come another 11 months you'll be swindling another $50 from me if you keep up your good work . . . er, I mean the carnival act you write. You should be proud since nary a penny has been swindled from me by the NY Times, Washington Post, The Daily Beast or the Intercept.
Even though I do not share all of Matt's political views, I have been a fan for years, and I believe this may be the most important piece he has ever authored. How did we reach the point where "journalists" have decided they need not report any news that might reflect poorly on their political party? Hate Trump all you want, but does that mean you will simply allow failing policies by the next administration to continue without question?
As a border state resident, I awoke this morning, to news that a woman at the border being actively raped, was saved by US agents in a helicopter. With spotlights and a bullhorn, they were able to stop the attack midway. This was hours after a 5 year old boy was left all alone, screaming in the dark, in the desert, by smugglers and a day after drowning migrants were pulled from the Rio Grande by Texas troopers. It is snake season in Texas, few leave their dogs outside, alone this time of year, unless they know the area is clear, but as a nation we are OK with kindergarders traversing the wild solo, in the middle of the night?
The abuse of women and children is bad enough, but there has also been virtually no coverage of the potential for terrorists accessing the US, via the southern border. Biden may be convinced white supremacists are the nation's biggest threat, I am not so sure. A former neighbor in Northern California expressed relief at moving, with fire season starting two months early this year. Conditions are the worst on record. Has no one considered that it would be easy pickings for half dozen terrorists to slip across the border, wait until August and then with nothing more than matchbooks, watch large swaths of California glow, while people perish and the entire US economy is thrown for a loop?
There are a multitude of other topics the media has decided to ignore. Crime, inflation, the origins of Covid, housing prices, Hunter Biden, etc. etc. A former professor use to say the amendments were not numbered by accident. Freedom of speech and the press were first because a democracy cannot survive without a free press to keep those in power honest. He never contemplated what happens when the press is no longer honest.
Indeed it should be a very big scandal if the NYT committed to a deliberate strategy to inflame racial tensions , as part of a business plan.
..."they’ve created a brand of imperious elite politics so revolting that it has the potential to unite even this Balkanized wreck of a country. If they keep this up, liberals and conservatives may start talking for real, and maybe even fix a thing or two."
From your lips to God's ears.
If you have read what is in the Hunter Biden laptop, it is terrifying. The so-called leader of the so-called free world ran for president because his senile brain is so besotted with his now elderly drug addict son, that when his meth mouth kid threw a tantrum about getting blamed by the family, daddy ran for president. Sonny boy wants to go back into the arms of the gangsters running Ukraine, take all the drugs he wants, and f*@k all the prostitutes they send him, and make porn videos of himself. This is all terrifying that the hand on the button in the white house is that deranged.
It also proves that Hunter Biden acted as exactly the nepotist hotline to the white house that some suspected. It brings into question WTAF was the reason for the USA overthrowing that friendly government.
This horseshit is how THIRD WORLD banana republics run. No exaggeration.
I voted for the Obams/Biden team, twice (2nd time with grave misgivings. But at this point I say the Obama administration is when the USA became a banana republic.
I'm a consultant to several liberal social services and arts organizations, many of which are now dedicating time and money to rooting out white supremacy within their midst. It's lunacy. It's Communists under the bed hysteria. Do these people really think that Nazis founded a food bank? I can't tell who's a True Believer and who's just going along to get along, but my guess is that the number of True Believers is distressingly high. Of course, in a few years, they'll forget they ever thought such nonsense.
The bottom line is Matt and Greenwald just have more brains and integrity than other media liberals, so they see the idiocy and hypocrisy of the reactionary group-think press and they can't help but call it out. Fortunately being ostracized by a bunch of middle-brow herd animals probably doesn't sting very much, especially when you don't need them..